DEATH WISH

 
One time, after an extremely violent confrontation with my father (and believe me there were many), he handed me a loaded gun and told me to kill myself.

He didn't actually tell me. He begged me. Said he wanted to see me dead, wished with his whole heart that I would do it.

Our horrifyingly turbulent history was filled with similar scenes (and scenes far worse), but somehow this one managed to penetrate my coat of self-defensive armor. I was very used to his cutting verbal abuse - - and even more used to his vicious physical attacks, but this was a new ambush. The words stung hard.

I still have that gun. And the bullets. 
I never want to grow old. I never want to be sick, feeble, and helpless. The glory days of my youth are far past. Someday.....perhaps someday.....the gun will serve a noble purpose.....

I had a serious death wish in my youth. In retrospect, I don't think I ever really wanted to die. My true goal was to expunge the abject pain and misery in my life - - to end the eternal chaotic nightmare in which I was ensnared - - the direct result of my father's insane abuse.

I had stayed under his suffocating shadow for too long, mainly to protect my mother - who was as emotionally wounded and physically immobilized as myself. Two emotional cripples, clinging desperately to the nothingness that was our existence.

I never wanted to die, but I wanted to kill the emotional agony that was devouring me.
One impossible night, after a terrifying scene, I locked myself in the bathroom. Grabbed a pair of scissors, viciously hacked at my wrists until the alarming amount of flowing blood brought me to my senses.
In truth - I was hacking at my father's evil soul.... 

I've written about that final night many times before, but I'm mentioning it again in a pitiful bout of beer drinking and remembrance.

That final physical scene with my father, when he tried to break my neck, choked me into unconsciousness, knocked me through the plate glass back door. I landed outside on hard concrete, amid sharp and bloody pieces of glass.
That night I got his gun, planned to kill him when he was sleeping, but lost my feeble courage....

And what, you might ask, caused my father to inflict such violence? We were having dinner. He was drinking too much beer. He started an argument about the cost of electricity. Warned me not to turn on any lights. I foolishly defied him. I got up and turned on the dining room light.

You don't dare defy my father. Ever. 

It took weeks for my physical wounds to heal. After that I took off for Hollywood and embarked on a long, slow death of self-destruction. It was my method of escape. Escape from the ugly bitch of reality.
Escape was always my main objective.

The freedom that I craved wasn't possible without becoming an entirely different person than I really was. Booze and drugs helped me abandon  my timidity, self-consciousness, fears and inhibitions, and aided me in becoming street-wise tough. I wasn't tough, but could admirably fake it.

Booze, drugs, one-night stands. Casual sex and back alley quickies. Serious "relationships" that never lasted. Lots of them. Copious amounts of malt liquor, washed down with whiskey or vodka. 

Soon the potency of booze worn thin. I started pouring whiskey or vodka into my malt liquor. Then, in an extended dimension to the lethal cocktail, I'd add pills - sleeping pills, tranquilizers. Anything available. 

I marvel that I didn't die. In fact, these many years later, I look back at my toxic youth in absolute jaw-dropping astonishment.
 
I played rough games with dangerous people. I thoroughly enjoyed endangering myself. The wild, shameless, unconventional, colorful, lurid, fantasy backdrop of Hollywood only served to enhance my unholy journey.....

.....and I learned how incredibly easy it is to lose one's dignity and abandon one's soul.



These were a few tiny glimpses of my turbulent past. It's a modified version. The expanded version would be too scary.
Most of my readers have heard this before (there are occasional yawns). I repeat things for the newer readers.